I’ve been meaning to say hello since I finished assembling my MPCNC but kept getting side tracked. I’m really happy with my MPCNC so far. I set it up for doing wood cutting for now but I will probably be changing it over to do PCB milling and/or 3D printing. Here are a couple images of the build. I attempted to do the tape measurer trick but it didn’t turn out how I had hoped. Once I feel like everything is setup correctly I will be doing a cleanup and wire tuck.
After doing a few runs with Repetier-Host, I saw they also make a server version. I work as a software engineer and enjoy finding side projects to test out new technologies. I spent some time getting Repetier-Server running on an RPI using a new operating system designed for IoT devices. I documented how I set it up on my website but it probably more complicated than most would want.
I also took a little video of everything running from the server web page.
After looking around on the forums more, it looks like cncjs might be more popular for controlling the CNC. I’m planning on looking into using it on the same IoT OS and thought I’d see if anyone is interested in it as well. I saw that there is already an RPI image available for running both cncjs and octoprint that probably fills every ones needs. Making another image is a chance for me to combine two interests and learn more about each. If it helps others then that’s another win.
Thanks for checking out the build. This looks like a great community built around a great machine and I’m looking forward to both.
haha definitely. I usually put things on my website from a software perspective. I’m looking into wrapping everything into an img to make everything easier.
It also looks like I had a glitch when posting an did a double post. Is there a delete button somewhere?
Have you looked at the v1pi GitHub? It’s a pretty slick system that runs all the commands you would in bash to make an image, but it runs in docker or vagrant on your laptop. The result is a modified image that anyone can load. It’s different than imaging an existing sd, because things like the ssh keys get generated on first boot. If you feel like contributing to the v1pi, PRs are welcome. It’s an open source project. I borrowed Ryan’s logo and name, but it’s not a for profit thing.
Does repetier server have a --nodaemon option or something? The tail dev null is something I haven’t seen before. I’ll have to remember that.
Also, don’t leave the machine unattended. They are more dangerous than 3d printers. Mk?
I poked around a bit and it looks good. A big part of me making an img is getting familiar with BalenaOS. They are a bare bones embedded OS for running docker containers. I hope it doesn’t seem rude of me to start the project when there is already another solution but it really is about the learning experience for me. I’ll be keeping an eye out for anything I learn that can be useful for v1pi also.
I later ran the repetier server executable directly and it runs in non daemon mode by default. It looks like the issue I was having was because of using systemd to start the server in the background. After which the docker container thought it was finished and stopped itself.
It was weird to me also. One of the docker maintainers suggested it in a github issue and so it seemed like an alright practice.
Yes, definitely. In the video posted I’m literally standing just out of the camera’s view. I had the router grab onto the wood during a test run and haven’t felt comfortable leaving it alone since.
Absolutely not. That sounds like a neat os. I wonder if custompios with the balenaos image would work too make it easier to distribute. I’m seems like a good fit for v1pi too, but I know people want it simple and at least one person has installed X.
I used to run my pi iot machines with hypriot, and I still have one c.h.i.p. running docker containers for my sprinklers :).
I hope I wasn’t coming off as too critical. Thanks for sharing.
